SOPHIE WENBAN recommends a remarkable Italian quartet who revive Bluegrass on period instruments to give a taste of the communal spirit that first made it popular
Letters from Latin America with Leo Boix: April 7, 2025
Travelogue/reportage by Argentinean Maria Sonia Cristoff, and poetry by Peruvian Gaston Fernandez and Puerto Rican Cristina Perez Diaz
Family issues and dragon-fuelled history amount to a vacuous spectacle that ill-fits the theatre, muses SIMON PARSONS
Monster profits on the Tube, paternal dilemmas for time travellers, and an alien abduction buddy saga
New releases from The Jayhawks, Primal Scream, and Max Subar
MIGUEL YOSHIDA explains the evolution and influence of the Cuban Casa De Las Americas in joining culture to the revolutionary struggle
Flitting between myth and the modern world, Medusa is determined to steer clear of human affairs. When her resolve crumbles, the result is petrifying in every sense
PATAGONIA, a vast region located at the southern extremity of South America, presents an array of otherworldly landscapes, encompassing the Andes mountain range, crystalline lakes and fjords, temperate forests, glaciers, and boundless deserts and steppes.
Maria Sonia Cristoff’s work, False Calm (Daunt Books, £10.99), seeks to challenge the idyllic perception of Patagonia by recounting the stories of several ghost towns that were negatively affected by the decline of the oil boom.
This non-fiction book serves as both a travelogue and a personal essay, guiding the author to the peripheries of Patagonia. It may resonate with admirers of Bruce Chatwin, Susan Sontag, or WG Sebald, as each of the 10 essays intricately intertwines the stories of individuals and communities abandoned by the hydrocarbon industry, enriched with anecdotes, vignettes, and ethereal descriptions expertly translated by Katherine Silver.
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DIANE WATT argues that while evidence of sex is not there, a 16th‑century lesbian poet could be Scotland’s answer to Gentleman Jack
LEO BOIX reviews two powerful Latin American novels in which myth and crime fiction expose the deadly consequences of patriarchy, clandestine abortion and state violence
From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin